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Mostly Cloudy Peninsula Hospital to close
Extended Care and Rehab Center will remain open
The Peninsula Hospital Center, which has served Far Rockaway and Five Towns residents for 104 years, is shutting down. A Chapter 11 trustee filed court papers on Monday to permanently close the hospital, and plans for an orderly closure are being finalized.
The trustee, Great Neck attorney Lori Lapin Jones, assumed control of Peninsula last week, replacing Todd Miller, who became chief executive officer of the hospital on Sept. 2, after the Brooklyn-based Revival Home Health Care took over operations from the MediSys Health Network. Under MediSys, the facility’s debt had grown to $60 million, and the network had begun closing Peninsula last July, before Revival saved the hospital — temporarily, it turns out.
“It’s very regrettable and unfortunate,” said Village of Lawrence Mayor Martin Oliner, who sat on the hospital’s board of directors and cast the lone vote opposing Revival’s takeover of Peninsula.
The hospital had entered bankruptcy proceedings and had received some measure of debt relief when the benefit fund for SEIU Local 1199, the union that represents nearly 700 of its employees, agreed to accept $10 million of the $20 million the fund was owed. Miller had expressed confidence that Peninsula would emerge from Chapter 11 by May following that agreement.
The lab had a number of violations, ranging from insufficient training for its employees to having three units of expired plasma in the Blood Bank freezer. Departments such as ambulatory, chemotherapy, radiology, dental and ophthalmology were operating, but with the hospital only partially functioning, nearly 300 employees, including 240 union members, were laid off on March 2.
The Peninsula Center for Extended Care and Rehabilitation was not affected by the suspension, and continues to function. It is not part of the hospital’s closure plan and will remain open. Approximately 200 employees of the nursing home are Local 1199 members.
SEIU Local 1199 spokeswoman Leah Gonzalez said that laid-off union members will be enrolled in the union’s Job Security Fund and will continue to receive health care benefits and employment and placement services. “We are deeply disappointed that Peninsula Hospital is closing its doors after tremendous efforts by the hospital, the employees, the union and the community to keep it open,” Gonzalez said. “This is an incredibly sad day for our workers, whose sole priority was saving Peninsula so it could continue its vital services to the Rockaway community.”
The hospital is required by state law to submit a closure plan to the state Health Department for review and approval. A Health Department spokesman said that it normally takes 90 days from submission of a plan for a facility to be closed.
“The Department will monitor operations at Peninsula to ensure an orderly closure,” a department statement read. “The Department will work with other providers to make sure patients have access to services that will be closing. The Department will also work with Peninsula to make sure medical records continue to be available to patients and are transferred to appropriate providers upon the request of patients.”
“It’s sad for the residents of Rockaway. We are left with one hospital in the area,” said five-year board member Joseph Mure Jr., a Neponsit resident, referring to St. John’s Episcopal Hospital. In the wake of Peninsula’s initial announcement last July that it would close, St. John’s planned to expand its emergency department to accommodate the increased community demand for services. The hospital is moving ahead with those plans.
However, Mure said he thinks Peninsula’s closing will leave a gaping health care hole for Rockaway residents. “This is setting us up for a serious problem,” he said, adding that residents will have to go to Brookdale Hospital in Brooklyn, which is run by MediSys and is also facing financial difficulty, or head east to hospitals farther out on Long Island.
